Limited resources, outstanding taxes and the lack of cooperation by locals are the main obstacles in carrying out development work, said Dr Irshad Ahmed, Acting Nazim Landhi Town. He added that “our budget is very small as compared to the problems of town while most of the projects within our jurisdiction have to be completed by City District Government Karachi.”

As far as scarcity of drinking water is concerned, the power outages hinder the process to some extent, he said. “Feature Pump is the main pumping station through which water is supplied to the entire town but due to the power outages the supply is disrupted,” he added. Dr Ahmed further said that the administration has laid new lines for drinking water even in the goths that come in their jurisdiction. However, some work is left after which this problem will be resolved completely. “The water and sewerage line development projects are costing us around Rs57.3million,” he explained.

Regarding the sewerage problems in both the industrial and residential areas of the town, he said that “the streets in the areas near Babar Market are narrow, thus it is difficult to carry out development work there.” Moreover, he added that “these streets are also known as the Gandi Gali Quarters which were once as broad as 10 feet but they have now been reduced to some three feet and it is difficult to lay down new sewerage lines in that area.”

In response to a question, Dr Ahmed said that “we are now working on a ‘naali system’ in which we are constructing small drains.” Regarding the sewerage problems in the industrial areas, he said that the project of laying both drinking water and sewerage water pipe lines has not been completed yet and the problems would be solved once the remaining work nearly (50 per cent) is completed.

“A majority of roads have been completed while the work has stopped at those that are still dug up,” he asserted, adding, “We have limited resources besides the people do not pay local taxes. Therefore, due to the limited funds we are unable to continue the work.” He claimed that they already have a liability of Rs70million as they have to make payments to contractors for the work already completed. Additionally, local taxes of about Rs40 million are overdue.

Defending the allegations that particular areas of the town have been more favoured for uplift works, he said, “We have always tried to carry out development work in the backward areas of the town and we have completed a lot of work. Unfortunately, some people create problems for us.” Explaining, he said that when the town administration tries to remove the encroachments for uplift work, the people fight with them even in some cases they take out arms and threaten the town staff. “Let’s take for example the drain of Landhi No1. When we went to clean that by removing encroachments, they started rioting so we eventually had to destroy part of the drain to clean it,” he said, adding, “On another occasion, we sent a vehicle for fumigation in that area but it was pelted with stones while in another incident our polio team was dealt harshly by the locals.”

Ahmed blamed that most of the people in these backward areas are uncivilised and hinder the development work under the support of a particular political party. Asked about the Mill Area Road (Shahra Landhi), Kehran Highway, Rehri Road and the water and sewerage pipelines along these roads, he said that these projects have to be completed by the city government, not the Landhi town administration. As far as street crimes are concerned, the Town Nazim said that the police does not cooperate with the town administration.